Can anybody shed some light on why there are no airport standbys for January in open time? It's about the only available to do as MU and now its gone.

 

what airplane? If it is on the 27 or maybe the Bus, post peak when they have plenty of reserves the Company reverts to "just in time" standbys. They build them last minute in order to assign during the daily assignments window in order to save money and use a reserve. However you can still get them via a general makeup request but you will not know until the day prior whether or not you will get it.

 

Surprisingly, 4A2b didn't mention this was also the policy & procedures during "4A2b".....

Just an observation...but we are still hiring.

 

true, very true Lindy... another new SOP developed in that period of time.

 

I'd like to add that during peak we had "plenty of reserves" even though the large number of standby periods were posted early to prevent trades and drops. In most seats, the bid pack average was low, there was no vacation buy back and no AVA was offered.


What a seesaw. Last month the emphasis was no drops (with no real incentive to pickup). Now they want no pickups (without incentive to drop). The common theme, for most seats, is low bid pack averages. Hint, Hint - A good peak scheduling plan with volunteer and draft opportunity would have led to some drops in January. A decent bid pack average might have sufficed.

They think they can turn us around 180 degrees on a dime with no incentives. Interesting hypothesis.

Maybe this works since I hear they are still hiring into this pre-4A2b style of scheduling.


If they are hiring for CGN or HKG, it's because the package stinks and they have to in order to fill it. This is somehow our fault so we have to pay.

 

There are no (nada, zilch, none) M11/MEM/CA trips in open time after 04JAN!*? (except for ASBY) How is that possible?

 

Start to watch when the schedulers release "sick trips" into Open Time each morning.

The earliest time is 7am when the trips are taken from the sick pilots.

The latest time is 10am.

Prior to 4A2B they were typically released by 7:10-7:15 am, but when they want to increase Reserve Utilization they wait later and later hoping pilots will stop monitoring OT --- especially those on the road who hope to put in for a trip before they head to bed.

During 4A2B I saw the sick trips drop in OT as late as 9:45 or 9:50am --- which gave them minimal exposure before they could assign them to reserves at 10am

This is not the intent of the 3 hr window and needs to be specifically addressed in the next contract.

 

What airplane are they doing that in? Did you report that to the union? I check O/T on the MD-11 at 0700 quite a bit and sick drops in within 10-15 mins. It depends on who is at the desk. I don't think there is a conspiracy, but with scheduling, you never know. I've seen them pull some underhanded stuff before.

 

Or maybe someone is just impatient. This morning, there are 44 Standbys in 757 Cap open time, going all the way to the end of the bid month.

 

Its also possible that some guys are waiting a couple of hours to call in sick while they evaluate their options for the next day's trip, slipping in the request at the last minute.